Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767 – 1794)
One of the leaders of the French Revolution.
Happiness is a new idea in Europe.
Dare! — this word contains all the politics of our revolution.
One cannot reign innocently: the insanity of doing so is evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper.
In the circumstances in which the Republic finds itself, the constitution cannot be inaugurated; it would destroy itself ... The provisional government of France is revolutionary until there is peace.
Peace and prosperity, public virtue, victory, everything is in the vigor of the laws. Outside of the laws everything is sterile and dead.
It is not enough, citizens, to have destroyed the factions, it is necessary now to repair the evil that they have done to the country.
The French people recognizes the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. The first day of every month is to be dedicated to the eternal.
Most arts have produced miracles, while the art of government has produced nothing but monsters.
You who make the laws, the vices and the virtues of the people will be your work.
I have not found a single good man in government; I have found good only in the people.
A nation regenerates itself only upon heaps of corpses.
It is time that we labored for the happiness of the people. Legislators who are to bring light and order into the world must pursue their course with inexorable tread, fearless and unswerving as the sun.
Every political edict which is not based upon nature is wrong.
The Revolution has grown cold; all its principles are weakened; there remains only red caps worn by intriguers. The exercise of terror has made crime blasé, as strong liquors made the palace blasé.
Insurrection is the exclusive right of the people and of the citizen. Every foreigner, every man clothed with public authority, is outlawed if he proposes it and must be put to death as a usurper of sovereignty and as interested in fomenting troubles for the purpose of doing evil or of adorning himself. Insurrections taking place under a despotism are always salutary. Those which break out in a free state are sometimes dangerous for liberty itself, because the revolt usurps its sublime pretexts and its sacred name. Revolts in free states leave long and painful wounds which bleed a whole century.
Citizens, by what illusion could one persuade himself that you are inhuman. Your Revolutionary Tribunal has condemned three hundred rascals to death in a year. Has not the Spanish Inquisition done worse than that ... Have the English assizes butchered no one in that period? ... What of the kings of Europe, does anyone prate to them of pity? Ah, do not allow yourselves to grow soft-hearted!
I do not belong to any faction, I will fight them all.
When human statecraft attaches a chain to the feet of a free man, whom it makes a slave in contempt of nature and citizenship, eternal justice rivets the other end about the tyrant's neck.
Let Revolutionists be Romans, not Tatars.
When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.